Hankook Review

Of the 10 most well-known and trusted tire brands in the world, Hankook is the youngest. Founded in South Korea in 1941, Hankook is a relative baby in the tire industry, as most brands have had a half-century head-start designing and manufacturing road tires.

Of the 10 most well-known and trusted tire brands in the world, Hankook is the youngest. Founded in South Korea in 1941, Hankook is a relative baby in the tire industry, as most brands have had a half-century head-start designing and manufacturing road tires. Still, Hankook has established itself as one of the world leaders in tires by providing affordable, high-performance tires with excellent tread-life warranties.

In my evaluation, I compared the prices, available options and tread-mile warranties on the most common tire sizes for sedans, SUVs and trucks. Hankook emerged as an affordable tire brand with the best tread-life warranties available on the market.

Pricing

Hankook's average price for the most common sedan tires is about $82 per tire. By comparison, the market average for the same tire sizes is about $102 per tire. However, Cooper has a lower average price for the same size tires at $73 per tire.

The SUV-sized tires cost an average of $139 per tire. Like the sedan tires, it's the second most affordable tire brand at this size, with Cooper beating it an average of $118 per tire at the same size.

The average truck tire costs about $181 per tire, about $22 below the market average. This is more competitive, as its just $2 over Cooper's average price for the same tires. That said, it's not as competitive as General Tire's average truck price, $173 per tire.

Tread-Life Warranty

Hankook's tread-life warranty covers 21 tire series, which is about average. However, the best of these warranties, covering the all-season touring Optimo H727, has a tread-life mileage of 100,000 miles – the highest of any mileage on the market. There are three other brands with 90,000-mile tires, and most have peak mileage warranties at around 80,000 miles.

Hankook's average tread-life warranty has an estimated mileage of 59,000 miles. This is close to 3,500 miles over the market average. Most of the covered series are set at 50,000 miles, with some high-performance sport tires having only 40,000 miles.

Every Hankook tire is covered by a 30-day road test period. This is average for most tire brands, though a few don't offer road test periods at all. This period allows you to evaluate the tire performance. If they don't live up to your expectations, like being too loud or too rough, you can return the tires for a full refund.

Performance Options

Hankook has mostly average available options fitting the most common tire sizes for 15-, 16- and 17-inch rims. To determine these averages, I searched for the three most common sizes fitting passenger vehicles on each of these rims, and Hankook was good, though not elite. It averaged five options for 15- and 17-inch rims and seven options for the 16-inch rim. The most common tire size, the P205/55R16, had nine performance options. Other brands had as many as 23 performance options on the same size. However, the available options are consistent. Every tire size I searched for had at least three options.

For trucks, I searched for the six most popular sizes fitting rims between 16- and 18-inches. In this evaluation, Hankook average five performance options per size. The market, on average, only had four options. However, elite brands averaged between 11 and 12 performance options per truck tire size.

Summary Hankook earned my pick as the brand with the best tread-mile warranties because it has the tire series with the highest estimated mileage and the average mileage is above-average. It's also among the most affordable tire brands available, and the available performance options for the most common sizes is good enough to provide some choice in your performance.